


the ninth life of glenn and oreo fury

by livingtheobsessedlife



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, captain america: civil war - Fandom
Genre: Cats, F/F, Maria Hill loved SHIELD, Original Character(s), but guess what so did natasha, i talk to my cat so now Maria Hill does too don’t worry about it, maria and nat bond over cats, no cats were harmed in the making of this fic, shove a slow burn into 4k words and this is what you get
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-19
Updated: 2019-01-19
Packaged: 2019-10-12 20:42:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17474657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/livingtheobsessedlife/pseuds/livingtheobsessedlife
Summary: Maria has a list of subpoenas longer than her arm and a crumbling spy organization without leadership left beneath her boots. Her mentor has gone and fled, and all she has is one measly message.Take care of the cats, it says.The cats. The damn cats.





	the ninth life of glenn and oreo fury

**Author's Note:**

> This started as a furyhill drabble that I scribbled down to procrastinate studying during midterms and 4,000 words later it’s a natmaria fic including two cat ocs and honestly it was such a fun time

When Nick Fury leaves SHIELD, lets the entire carefully crafted organization blow up in his wake, he leaves a single message for his deputy. A single message, all in all less than ten words.

Maria has a list of subpoenas longer than her arm and a crumbling spy organization without leadership left beneath her boots. Her mentor has gone and fled, and all she has is one measly message.

_Take care of the cats_ , it says.

The cats. The damn cats.

Not a word about who’s left or who she can trust. No, it’s just her and the cats. Fury’s long gone. She imagines there isn’t anybody left that she can trust anyway.

Maria knows absolutely nothing about cats in the first place, but they were treasured by Nick Fury who had taught her everything she knew and trusted her just about implicitly, even if he’s on the run and hiding somewhere far away from her, so she feels like she has to at least make sure they’re okay for the time being.

She finds the cats at Nick’s old place, meowing in two separate crates with food and water and toys to keep them happy. Nick left a note taped to the crate belonging to the dark calico cat with detailed directions as to their likes and dislikes, their signs for happiness and want. Maria isn’t surprised at all- Nick loved those cats for some unbeknownst reason.

They cry the entire car ride from Nick’s place to her own, going quiet as soon as she closes her front door behind her.

“This is your new home,” She says, sitting on the floor crisscross applesauce and looking into their crates as she lets out her new pets.

The black one with white feet, a female kitten named Oreo according to Nick’s note, rubs her nose affectionately against Maria’s knee. She rubs her hand along the cat’s spine, inciting a gentle purr in response. It’s kinda cute actually. Huh.

So Maria decides that fine, okay, she’ll do what Nick asks and take care of the damn cats.

That’s not to say she does it quietly. On the contrary. A week before and Maria was second in command of one of the world’s most powerful clandestine organizations. Now she has been reduced to a lowly cat sitter. So hell yeah she bickers.

The only problem being that there isn’t anybody left really, just her and the cats, so the bickering gets directed at the cats and not actual people, and well, that kinda reduces some of its effectiveness.

“Are you sure you can handle another scoop, Glenn?” Maria says, all so grudgingly as a calico cat purrs around her ankles, scoop of cat food tauntingly suspended in her hand three feet above the food bowl, “You’re getting a little round around the middle there, big guy.”

The young cat looks up at her sweetly. Even with her spy training Maria can’t resist, “Fine,” She says, begrudgingly, “Another scoop it is. But you better run around tomorrow or you’ll get even fatter. You’re up, Oreo.”

Every once in awhile, she wonders when this became her life. Talking to cats. Huh.

Sometimes, she’ll receive an encrypted message from Nick that she opens with a thrill in her veins. If Nick Fury showed up at her door at that very moment and asked her to pick herself up and fight for SHIELD again, she’d do so without so much as a moment’s notice. She never receives a call to arms though, not in any words at all.

They’re always messages asking after the cats, not so much a mention of what SHIELD once was or what it is now.

_I miss Oreo, my little sweetheart_ , it’ll say, _Has Glenn lost the weight the vet recommended? Send pictures_.

Her response is always terse, a couple of cat pictures in poor lighting and a footnote asking after any updates on SHIELD.

Nick never responds to the post scriptum.

At some point she gets used to it without realizing. Oreo will wake her up every morning, paws kneading at her blanket while Glenn meows at the door like nothing else.

“Okay, okay,” she’ll say with a curt laugh, slipping socks onto her feet as Oreo stretches on her bed, “I’m coming, Glenn. You’ll get your breakfast in a second.”

She pours a scoop into each cat’s food bowl, pours coffee for herself, and starts cooking her breakfast as Glenn attempts to steal food from Oreo’s bowl. It’s easy, quiet, turns into a rhythm engraved into her like a weird, off-the-sleeve heartbeat. 

When her own breakfast is gone, she’ll open the terrace doors so that the cats can bask in the sunlight if the weather’s nice while she gets dressed for the day. Glenn pads out to his favorite spot, front and center of all the world’s sunlight while Oreo sits at the seam between the carpet and the patio, nose jutting into a pool of sunlight while the rest of her black body is comfortably protected by the shade of the apartment. 

“Be good while I’m out, kitties!” Maria calls out, keys jangling as she leaves the apartment every morning. When Stark found out about the dissolution of SHIELD, he offered jobs to loyal members. Maria almost didn’t take it, never being a huge fan of working for egomaniac billionaires that wear metal suits armed with missiles as easily as Dolce and Gabbana, but well, it’s better than just sitting in the house all day and talking to cats instead of humans, “I’ll be back by five!”

Sometimes, Oreo will even meow back. Glenn’s usually asleep. 

Before her job at S.I, Maria had never had a real Nine-to-five job before. She’d been in the military, then a spy, then a leader of SHIELD. Now she’s barely a notch above PR rep. But hey, at least she gets home at five every day. This way, the cats get fed and Maria doesn’t have to worry about Glenn getting depressed again. Fury said he’ll get like that. 

She cooks dinner now, she’s proud to say, has taught herself how to pick out the right ground beef and cook a chicken breast without poisoning herself. 

It’s all very different from the life she lead with SHIELD. 

Sometimes she’ll feed Glenn scraps of chicken while she’s cooking. 

Maria’s in the kitchen one night cooking dinner for herself, Glenn sitting patiently at her heels as Oreo naps on top of the tv, when there’s a knock at the door. And now, that just isn’t right. Not a single person has knocked on her door since she’s moved to the building after SHIELD fell, not a single visitor has come by. It’s just been her and the cats, as it should be. Nobody knows where she lives now. 

Across the room, Oreo’s black ears perk up.

Maria puts aside her knife, pulls her pan off the stove, and carefully approaches the door. 

Glenn watches from beneath a kitchen chair as Oreo arches her back before joining her cohort under the table. 

When Maria opens the door she lets out a breath, “What are you doing here, Nat?”

Maria doesn’t invite her, but Nat pushes her way into the apartment without further ado.

“Heard you’ve been working with Stark after everything. He told me where I could find you. Nice place. You cooking?”

“Yeah,” Maria says, closing her front door and watching as Nat finds her kitchen, the half-burnt pan full of chicken, “You didn’t answer my question. What are you doing here?”

Nat pushes herself onto the counter, eyes roaming constantly, “Been trying to find some of the loyal folks, make sure they’re all okay. You were one of the easier ones to track down.”

“I’m not hiding, Nat.”

Nat looks away from the tile floor to meet Maria’s eyes, a piercing emerald that makes Maria more uneasy than it should, “I know. I just wasn’t looking hard enough.”

They don’t say anything for a moment after that, let it weigh dually on them like the faint smell of under seasoned chicken that permeates the small kitchen. Silence has always been the natural succession for the pair of them. It’s somehow miles easier than the indistinct chitchat. 

Glenn and Oreo apparently decide that Nat is not going to kill them while they nap, and Oreo slowly peers around a chair leg, looking up at Nat before gravitating toward the stranger. Glenn waddles after. 

“Oh my god,” Nat deadpans when Oreo purrs and rubs her face against the sole of Nat’s shoe, “I didn’t know that you got Fury’s cats!”

“Yeah,” Maria says reluctantly as she watches Glenn double check his food bowl to see if Maria had inexplicably chosen to give him a second dinner while he was hiding under the chair, “He may be on the run with the world on fire behind him, but he made damn sure his cats got looked after. That’s just like him.”

Nat actually snorts, somehow weirdly feminine, “Ha, _sucker_.”

“Oh, shut up. You know you totally adore these cats,” Maria responds, reaching down to rub between Glenn’s calico ears, “You can give Glenn his evening catnip if you promise not to make fun of them anymore.”

Nat skillfully jumps off the edge of the counter, a sly smile gracing her lips, “Gladly, Maria.”

Glenn follows eagerly after this new stranger as she walks towards the living room with his bag of catnip. 

Nat starts coming around a lot more often after that. 

Maria gets just a little better at not burning or undercooking chicken and starts buying enough food to consistently feed two people _and_ two cats. 

Nat comes by in the evenings after Maria comes home from her Stark Industries day job when she doesn’t otherwise have Avengers duties. Sometimes she brings treats or toys for the cats. Maria isn’t sure when but somehow her apartment has turned into a Cat House: there’s a cat tree and more ball toys than can be counted, and Maria is pretty sure there are more cat treats in the house than chocolate. Nat’s only feeding to the fire, really. She loves it. 

“I’ve got goodies,” She’ll say, walking into the apartment without so much as a knock and plopping a plastic bag from the grocery store near The Tower on the table, “Ice cream for us and some of Stark’s leftover salmon for the kids.”

Maria laughs at Nat’s nickname for the cats as the pets find their way into the kitchen by the trail of new smells. 

Before SHIELD, this never would’ve been so much as a semblance of a life Maria could’ve had. Sometimes, it almost feels like she’s betraying herself for leading it. What’s a nine-to-five job and a couple of cats when you once led espionage missions that saved hundreds of thousands of people? It even weirder that she kinda likes the change, has found herself embracing it. 

Things are really different now. 

Maria still makes fun of the cats. She’ll call Glenn round and mock Oreo for getting scared by her own shadow, but in the end she’ll fall asleep with Oreo purring on top of her chest and Glenn asleep at the foot of the bed. 

Even on the busy weeks, Nat tries to come by at least once a week. 

It’s nice to have somebody who can empathize with the whole aftermath of SHIELD. It had really hit Maria hard, forcing herself to lose faith in something of which she had stood in front of and shouted, _This is my place. This is where I belong. It is good and safe from corruption._

Most nights they end up watching trashy reality television and eating popcorn. It’s nice. 

“Do you ever… think about what’s left of SHIELD?” Maria asks one night as a rerun of Keeping Up With the Kardashians runs on the television. 

“Huh?”

“I don’t know,” Maria sighs- _she really doesn’t know where she’s going with this_ , “We never really assessed the damage. Everybody just kinda cut and run and hid away. We never took a head count. What if there was something we could’ve done to save it? It meant so much to all of us, y’know?”

Nat’s quiet for a long moment after that. Kim and Khloe get into another fight on the tv and Nat finally shakes her head. 

“Well we’re here, aren’t we?”

Maria isn't sure what to say to that, so they just let the moment fizzle into silence. Glenn finds his way onto the couch and settles between the pair of them. 

Popcorn is one of the few foods Glenn won’t so much as try to eat. 

Nat falls asleep one night while enjoying a bimonthly showing of Die Hard, when her phone lights up, a text displayed on the screen as the technology chirps with a faint trill. It wouldn’t normally be something that Maria pays any attention to, but she spots the background beneath the slim text banner: a picture of Nat’s grinning face buried in Glenn’s dark fur, his purring face on full display, and Maria can’t help but smile. 

Inadvertently reading the text on the screen was solely the product of looking at the background, you see. An invasion of privacy like that isn’t something Maria would not normally subscribe, especially coming out of one of the world’s biggest security scandals ever known, but her eyes just kinda… slipped you see, so she reads the text without meaning to. 

It’s from Stark, whose contact name Maria notices is quite creatively: _Tony Stank_ , no doubt an inside joke about Maria’s boss. The text itself makes Maria’s cheeks burn and her stomach turn into a sort of rolly polly, barely four private words that make Maria feel like she’s walked in on Nat in the shower or something, curtly reading _still w/the gf?_

Maria isn’t sure what to do with that, and she certainly has a lot of questions. Instead of waking Nat and asking her herself, Maria carefully extricates herself from the couch and makes her way to the kitchen because obviously drinking tea alone is the answer. 

Oreo pads quietly after her. Glenn continues to snore on top Nat’s stomach. 

When Nat leaves for a long period of time, the cats can definitely tell. 

It’s almost like they can sense that one of their co parents are off risking their life for world peace while the other is at home taking care of them between droning days of learning how to quantify popularity in modern media. 

Or at least it feels like they meow a lot more often when Nat’s gone at least. 

Maria can only assume that they can tell that she isn’t there, feel the belly footed paradigm shift. Maria certainly does. 

Maria keeps up her rhythm and routine even when Nat isn’t there, but after too many days of doing it without her there, it’ll start to feel like banging on a drum set with only one stick.

It’s during a particularly long Nat-less stint when Maria glances up at the tv, Glenn stepping annoyingly over her toes as he begs for food, and finds the Avengers logo splayed like a watermark over exclusive video footage of some place in Germany. 

The news banner says something about a Civil War. 

Maria gets this inexplicable uneasy feeling that drops through her stomach like a stone on fire. She can’t pull her eyes away from the screen. Glenn meows, somewhere. 

She searches intensely for just a glimpse- a mere glimpse is all she asks- of Nat. The helicopter camera shakes, a new reporter shrieks, an explosion goes off somewhere off-camera. Iron Man. Captain America. Maria had heard that there was something going on with the Avengers and the U.N, but she couldn’t have even _imagined_ this. She searches for a sighting of Nat. Anything. 

Somewhere between two explosions and a wicked kick from a black-suited, catlike hero Maria doesn’t recognize, Maria spots a flash of red hair that is followed by a roundhouse kick to its offender, bodies dually shrouded by flash and smoke. But she recognizes that hair, lets out a shaky breath. Glenn meows at her, but she can’t take her eyes away from the footage. 

A yell goes out, something tiny and red goes from small to big real quick with this booming cackle, and suddenly the screen is completely black. 

The anchor back at the newsroom is having trouble contacting their source back at the site. Maria knows that’s the rest of the exclusive they’re going to get tonight. 

She can’t get the flash of that red hair out of her head, it’s burned to the inside of her eyelids like a brand of a memory of a feeling deep in her stomach. 

In the kitchen, Oreo knocks over her bowl, sending food spilling across the wooden floor like marbles. Glenn is no doubt already making a pass at vacuuming it up with his mouth. Maria really needs to go clean that up. Yeah. 

After the single coverage of the Incident in Germany, there’s nothing truly definitive from the press for about a week and a half, nothing but wild speculation and radio silence. Maria assumes the worst. 

Then one day the Secretary of State holds a press conference condemning the ‘heroes formerly known as Captain America, Black Widow, Hawkeye, Falcon, and Ant Man’ as traitors against the States. Maria very nearly doesn’t believe it- she can’t really, not based on the tight feeling in her chest, not if she wants to keep breathing the right way for the next thirty seconds- but then she glances at the empty space beside her on the couch and yeah, maybe she can believe it, if just a little. 

The faces of these tired fugitives with prisoner numbers splayed across their chests and grimaces etched into their expressions are displayed one after the other on news reports, all done so matter of fact that it doesn’t feel real. This was why that feeling had clutched dearly onto her insides, tried to pull at her instincts with everything she had left that _no, this was not going to be good_. Because this now was not, in fact, good, not in any sense of the word. 

“Hey, girly,” Maria says to Oreo that night, stroking her shiny black fur as Glenn hides beneath the bed, “Just so you know, Nat isn’t gonna be home for awhile. It’ll just be us and the ol’ job. No more excitement for us. Probably for the best, right?” Unsurprisingly, Oreo doesn’t respond, just continues to purr, eyes closed, “Anyway, we should probably go to sleep soon. Gotta get up and be at S.I tomorrow.”

It never once strikes Maria as odd anymore that she talks to these cats as if they’re people. It’s been awhile since she’s even thought twice about it. 

It’s a week later and she’s watching the news off the little tv in her kitchen during dinner when Maria finds out that the imprisoned ex-Avengers had somehow managed an impressive escape from the most secure prison on the planet. They’ve graduated from traitors to traitor-fugitives. Must be fun. 

There’s this disquieting cocktail of joy and terror surging its way through her veins, unsure and cancerous and unnecessarily hopeful all at the same. The news outlets flash the Avengers’ mugshots like they’re selling something on a late night infomercial. 

Maria changes the channel to something that doesn't quite make her feel like her insides are on fire. 

“Did you hear that, Glenn?” Maria says in a chipper, sing-song voice as the calico cat attempts to catch any lost table scraps, “Nattie made a break for it.”

Oreo, catnapping on the kitchen counter, mewls at the familiar name. 

“Yeah,” Maria says, stabbing at her not-bad piece of chicken breast, her voice low, “I miss her, too, Oreo. But there’s nothing we can do.”

Then they go another month without Nat and it all starts to feel like it was all a dream as a new rhythm falls forlornly into place around them- _No more Nat. No more Nat. No more Nat_. 

The news cycles stopped covering the disappearance of the former heroes. Apparently, have more interesting things to report than ‘ _yep, still on the run_ ’. Maria’s weirdly grateful for that, not able to admit to herself why. It was starting to get to her, always seeing the same mug shots, so unlike the people she once knew, with dirt on their face and low lighting cast over the pictures to make them look as far from heroes as possible. Seeing the pictures makes her itch. She watches less news nowadays. 

Over the course of it, Maria has discovered that while the majority of the programming at PBS is either geared for children or the elderly, they mention particularly few wanted criminals. She’s found that Glenn is a fan of Antique Roadshow, likes to sit and stair transfixed at the screen. They’ve been watching a lot of that lately. There isn’t much she’d rather be doing anyway. 

There’s a sound of a knock at the door one day as an elderly woman attempts to sell a cheap knockoff case for millions of dollars on the show. 

“That must be the take-out,” Maria says aloud as she pick Glenn up off her lap and pads toward the door. Oreo follows sweetly after her, “That was real fast for them,” She tells the cat at her heels, “I’m gonna have to tip extra aren’t I, Oreo?”

Maria opens the door as she flips through her wallet, “Sixteen dollars, right?”

“I wouldn’t say no, but it’s gotta be in cash. Been having some identity issues lately.”

Maria freezes and when she looks up… that definitely isn’t the delivery guy. 

“Oh my god. What are you doing here, Nat?”

She grins, leans against the door frame, “Talk about déjà vu, right?”

“Nat-“

“I missed the cats. Turns out I’m a cat person. Who would’ve thought?”

“Nat, all of SHIELD knew you had a soft spot for cats. That was the second worst kept secret behind Fury’s fondness for em,” She pauses, just to take in the pure existence of Nat at her doorstep, “You can’t be here. There’s probably eyes on my door out there. This place is dangerous for you. You’re wanted out there, Nat.”

Nat’s eyes somehow go hard and soft at the same time like steel-coated cotton, and she smiles, “Like I said,” She says, “I’m here to see the cats.”

Then just like that she’s taking a step toward Maria and... kisses her. 

Her hands are around Maria’s face and she’s pulling her close. Right there. In the doorway of Maria’s apartment. Where the cats can see. Where anybody in the hallway could totally see. 

It shocks Maria at first, somehow. 

Maria Hill, once deputy to the most powerful spy in the entire world, is shocked by the warm hands on her face, the fugitive at her door. 

But then she snaps out of it- and all but falls in. Her hand locks around Nat’s wrist as she pulls her closer. 

“Can I come in?” Nat asks, barely a nose’s length away, a smile on her face, “Just for a bit, before I have to go on the run again?”

Maria’s smiling too, something she hasn’t done in what feels like a month really, “Glenn and Oreo will be happy to see you. They miss you when you’re gone.”

Nat grabs a hold of Maria’s collar, the door shoved shut behind them, and she presses another kiss to Maria’s lips, “I missed you, too. Now where are those cats?”

Oreo comes running down the hall, Glenn waddling happily after. They’re nearly as excited to see Nat as Maria is. 

Maria wonders, somewhere in the recesses of her mind, if their little cat hearts are beating like hers. 

“Takeout’s on the way. It should be fine as long as we hide you when he’s here.”

“Thank god, I was kinda worried I’d be subjected to your chicken again.”

“For your information, I’ve improved a lot since you’ve been here last.”

“Yeah, right. I’ll believe that when I taste it.”

Maria laughs, long and genuine. The cats are loving the attention, “Oh, shut up and kiss me.”

Nat looks away from the purring calico to smile at Maria, “Don’t have to tell me twice.”


End file.
